Call Centers

I was astonished to hear inside an elevator chatter that was heavily accented with Santa Monica, California American English. Apparently, these young people are encouraged to keep on talking like Americans in between their breaks so as to polish further their communication skills.

There are hundreds of thousands of Filipinos working in "call centers". They provide technical support for Dell computers, travel advice for Expedia, billing inquiries for American Express, they "cold call" for innumerable mortgage companies as well as timeshare outfits.

This niche has allowed the country to earn quite a bit of money because our competition is relatively few, mainly India but if we don't watch it, other nations will try to take over with even better services at an even less expensive rate.

Nothing bad with this set-up. Just another reason why we need to continuously invest in educating the youth and teaching them skills that will enable them to compete in the world market.